


And The Night Is All We Have Left To Hold

by ivanolix



Series: Storm-verse [2]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Canon - TV, Female Friendship, Female Protagonist, Gen, Loss, PTSD, Parenthood, Pregnancy, Season/Series 03, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-26
Updated: 2010-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-09 06:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/83837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivanolix/pseuds/ivanolix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Julia Brynn isn't surviving (having and losing) Kacey the expected way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And The Night Is All We Have Left To Hold

**Author's Note:**

> This story has three roots. The first is that Julia Brynn gets a bit of a bad rap in fandom for breaking Kara's heart by claiming Kacey, despite it not being her fault at all—she's just not a main character, so she doesn't get the same kind of sympathy. The second is that in my fic "Meet Your Storm" Kara accidentally gets to keep Kacey, and by the time Julia finds out she lets Kara keep her, but I wasn't able to explore her full reasons for doing so and it bugged me from an authorial point of view. This story is a "fix-it" fic, but it isn't happy and doesn't really end happily, it just fixes the POV blinders that the original fic unfortunately had to have. However, Julia's story here is integral to the planned sequel to "Meet Your Storm", which is where there's more of a "fix" for the disaster that is Julia Brynn's life—and so that was the third root for this story.

Julia Brynn had marked the moment of her death so many separate times, she wasn't sure anymore if she was alive or dead. Little things like that didn't seem to matter. Maybe they'd all died when the nukes had hit Caprica, and all the running was punishment for their sins. Julia didn't believe in the gods—of course, that could be why she was here.

Somehow, running with muscles aching and lungs burning, stealing radiation medication when she could, she lasted for months. A few others stumbled across her path, all of them with nothing to their names beside the clothes on their backs. Julia's were as ragged and as torn as her cropped hair.

But even those were taken away in the Farms.

Julia had become wiry, iron-strong, and after she lashed out at the one they called Leoben, she was drugged and never taken off the medication. Perhaps it was better that way. Perhaps it served her well to live in a daze, only sense hands and needles and tubes from afar, not up close and visceral where the violation might rip what was left of her mind to shreds. Her world looked no more like a nightmare in this place than on the run, not when understanding stayed almost out of reach.

If she'd known about the resistance, she might have dared to hope for a rescue. But she didn't. So when the walls around her crumbled, and strangely familiar faces floated in front of her hazy eyes, wearing sports jackets and carrying guns, it was just another aspect of the nightmare. Julia didn't know exactly what they'd done to her here, but she recalled enough to flinch when hands touched her, when strong arms lifted her from the bed she'd been strapped into and said words like "It's okay, you're safe now." It scarcely managed to make sense.

They carried her out and left the place behind in rubble, and her first clear thought in who knew how long was to curse Leoben, the one name she had at hand. That first night she was left alone. That first night she vomited until she couldn't bear it anymore. That first night she lay curled and shivering in the resistance camp and couldn't sleep, even with the free sky above her.

Yet she'd already been mostly gone by the time that the Farms took her. It wasn't hard to bounce back to such a low level, not with all these people around her. It still felt a little like a nightmare, though. And that would explain why Sam Anders wasn't like the persona she remembered from the television.

***

Three nights later, and Julia still couldn't sleep. The sick feeling in her gut kept starting to surface before she could stuff it down, silence it, continue forgetting about that time marked by the haze of drugs and—and she couldn't bear to think of the rest. The next night she reached for a desperate union with a confused resistance fighter who didn't even know her name. It didn't work.

Paulla Schaffer found her kneeling outside the camp, trying not to vomit, and stepped in with strong arms to wrap around Julia's shoulders. Julia didn't know who this woman was, but she was not like everyone who haunted the corners of her eyes, and so Julia didn't object.

"What happened?" Paulla asked.

Julia told her.

"You're coming with me," Paulla informed her with a frown. "Because if you ever try to destroy yourself like that again, I want to be there to personally stop you."

It probably meant something that Julia felt like glaring at her, not jerking away.

***

Paulla didn't say much, but sometimes it was too much anyways. She gave Julia a crop cut, and later placed a gun in her hands, adjusted her finger on the trigger as she explained aiming. All Julia wanted to hear, though, was the resounding blast of the bullet. No words were necessary as they stood there. Sometimes Paulla said them anyways, sometimes she just sat by Julia around the campfire in silence.

But though Paulla pushed her to be fierce, it was only a couple weeks before she was vomiting again and not because of memories. She refused to tell anyone.

The resistance didn't stop running. It helped, that way. No time to think, no time to remember, only time to kill. Until she had to stop by a stream and lose the second meal that day, skin becoming pale and clammy.

"You're pregnant, right?" Paulla said as she came behind Julia.

Julia wiped her mouth, pressing her lips together, and didn't look at Paulla as she walked back to the trail. Paulla put a hand on her back as they walked anyways.

She might be a burr in Julia's side, the help that wouldn't disappear and wouldn't stop bringing up points, but as long as Julia didn't say anything to her then things were safe. After all, being pregnant wasn't the end of the world. It had to be that disastrous one-night-stand. It had to be. Never mind that she started to show too soon for that date to work.

It never crossed her mind to find a way to end it, because that would mean that she was scared of what it might mean. She couldn't be. So she didn't.

***

The resistance went from Farm to Farm until they ran out of options. Julia fought with them as her belly started to swell, as the months went by and everyone despaired. Even Paulla, who gave her the sort of looks that were full of worry for a possibility that Julia refused to acknowledge. Julia told herself that this baby was just an accident, but it was the accident that was going to bring her back to existence. As the baby started moving in her, Julia could feel the life start to drown out some of the death.

She managed to keep her life even when the Cylons spread confusion around them, and nearly all of the rest of the resistance died. Instead of watching the numbers dwindle, she picked out the name Kacey and repeated it in her head. Then the SAR Raptors came to Caprica on the wings of a rescue, and Kacey kicked her belly soundly as they used FTL to fly away to the Fleet, and the kick was a jumpstart.

The Fleet was tired. The Fleet was weary. The Fleet would do anything to settle on a planet. Julia thought the Fleet was the most healing place she'd seen since before she died the first time.

That wasn't enough change to make Doc Cottle an option, not with the title doctor and the needles and the scrubs. Julia feared what might happen as the birth drew near, and joined the confusion down on the planet instead, hiding among the broad New Caprica workforce and trying to gain her whole life back.

"What are you doing, Julia?" Paulla asked when she found her in one of the many mess halls, so far from any of the resistance.

"Nothing," Julia said under her breath as she ate.

"You heard the stories, right?" Paulla asked, ignoring the push-off and sitting across from Julia. "That Cylon they have in the brig? Had a baby with a human. And the baby's dead. I don't think it's a coincidence that the stories usually end with some form of the phrase 'frakkin' toaster lover was a traitor anyway'."

Julia looked up and hissed at her. "Has nothing to do with me."

"Julia, you think pretending it doesn't exist makes it go away?" There were lines in Paulla's face, lines that were worried because of more than observation.

Julia did think that, because when Paulla wasn't here in her face, she didn't feel sick and could focus on her accidental _human_ baby. "Get away from my table," she said under her breath, cold eyes rising to Paulla.

Paulla's eyes might be conflicted, but she turned and acquiesced.

Julia went back to eating.

***

When Kacey was born with the help of a midwife, and was a healthy baby girl, it was the moment Julia's world fell apart and the moment it sprang back to vivid life. She had been living as a dead woman, and Kacey had stepped into the place between life and death and pulled Julia back to life. There was no way that Julia could remember anything but her love for this tiny, tiny little baby.

Julia lost track of time, and the world, and everything. She smiled again after more than a year when Kacey fell asleep for the first time, and Julia stroked the blonde fuzz on her head with a reverence that she didn't know she could feel. "You are my life, baby," she whispered, as they slept in a tent far from everyone else.

No one bothered them for a while as New Caprica started coming together. Julia didn't see anyone she knew, no one who could remind her that Kacey could be her greatest trauma as well as her one and only solace. Julia worked hard and learned to laugh again, and taught Kacey how as they sat, a wee bit of a family pretending that nothing had ever existed before this brand new world.

Even if Julia sometimes wondered if all Kacey's growth spurts were going straight to her hair instead of the rest of her, life was perfect.

Kacey was nine months old when she said her first word—'mama'—and Julia broke down and cried a little as she hugged her close, for reasons that she didn't want to remember. What she did undoubtedly know was that she would give anything to keep her little girl warm and secure in her care. The clouds hung cold and grey outside, but with Kacey in her arms, Julia didn't mind.

'Mama' was the last word that she heard Kacey speak before she died another death.

***

Julia woke on the ground floor of her tent. Her head throbbed, and a sticky pool of blood lay beneath it. She heard the sound of Cylon ships flying overhead, sounds that ripped through all her masks and curtains to everything that she'd hid away. Her breath came in as a choking gasp, her stomach rolled painfully in her panic, and her first thought as always now was _Kacey_.

She had just been in her arms, with Julia just putting on her coat before they'd go to the market. But as Julia stood to her feet, leaning on the edge of the bed as her head spun, Kacey was gone.

Kacey was gone.

Julia could never quite remember what she did next. She was breathing too fast, moving too quick, running through the streets as she cried out for the one piece of her that she couldn't bear to lose. No one heard, as they stared at the Raiders, as they watched the Centurions march down the streets. Julia didn't know where she ended up collapsing, or who brought her in to the doctor's, still bleeding from the contusion on her head.

They didn't understand why she screamed when she woke up, ripping the blood transfusion needle out of her arm, wrenching herself from the hospital bed and tearing off the bandage around her head. She couldn't stop sobbing long enough to tell them why she had to dart out of a hospital that was bringing back all the wrong memories. And then, when she made it outside, when she fell to her knees dizzy with concussion and not knowing what she was going to do, she couldn't stop sobbing as she felt the life ebbing out of her.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know," murmured the nurse who found her, who put a bandage to her head to stop the bleeding again.

Julia swayed against her and could only whisper, "Kacey. Where's Kacey?" No one answered then. No one answered later.

All her carefully constructed illusions lay in neatly shattered pieces at her feet when she woke again, this time resting on a cot in a tent that looked more like her own. The woman who helped her said her name was Ishay. She was the one who told her that the Cylons had come to occupy the planet—and Julia shivered and rocked back and forth and whispered, "Not again, not again." She was the one who told her that many people had gone missing, and everyone who wasn't was accounted for but there was no little girl named Kacey—and Julia wept.

She next woke with a pit in her stomach for the first time in over a year, and she spent a half hour losing herself in dry heaves outside the tent door. Someone came out, tried to touch her shoulder. Julia wrenched away, glared at them, and walked away. By the time she came back, it wasn't a safe place to hide from the Cylons.

Julia walked away for the last time, and vowed that with her last breath she would be warring to take down the Cylons. But all the things she tried to forget eventually surfaced, and it was just as hopeless this time, when she was trying to forget that for those precious nine months Kacey had made her heart whole. Now she couldn't just forget that it hadn't always been broken.

She still tried, though. She had to.

***

Four months of New Caprica hell made Julia curl in on herself, start to petrify. She and Kacey had pulled back from the planet because of fears Julia refused to identify, but now it was worse. Anders was back in this resistance, with familiar old faces, and Julia couldn't face any of them. And the other side—Tory and Roslin—were centered at a school. With children.

So Julia just did things in her own way. It was almost easy to get off the grid entirely, to hide from all the censuses and polls and curfew checks, to live with only the work of her own two hands. It took all her focus to survive, and so it was worth it.

She had nightmares where she remembered chasing the Cylons that had taken her baby (in the dream at least), and in them she denied everything as she screamed for her Kacey. She'd always be two steps away when she would stumble, face crashing into the cold dirt, and she'd wake with her face crushed in her pillow. It made the perfect sponge for her hot stinging tears. And no comfort could be found even when she figured out how to suppress the nauseated feeling that came whenever she saw a Cylon, real or not.

The nightmares she couldn't help, but it was worse when she woke and just automatically expected Kacey to be curled in her arms, smelling like baby-smooth skin and curly blonde hair. She could almost feel the shape of her, if she thought too hard, and so she tried not to think to save her tears.

But at the end of four months, Julia looked up and saw a ship falling from the sky, Vipers shooting out as bombs exploded in New Caprica City. She trusted it simply because it was no nightmare, and following an impulse she didn't understand, ran like hell back to civilization.

She almost made it onto one of the first Raptors, but only managed to squeeze in on one of the last ones. Before she knew it, she was back on ships, calming ships, and the Cylons were gone.

Yet as all around her cheered, she was still alone.

***

Dogsville was her saving grace, with the lack of boundaries and the immersion into the chaos of post-New Caprica grief. Julia wasn't the only one who'd lost, she was just the first. All the confused broken people eased through her shell without killing her, and when she didn't have any nightmares that night, it almost made her cry to wake bleary-eyed in the morning. She feared she was forgetting too much, now.

So she tightened her belt, set her jaw, and went to the meeting for parents who had lost children. There were dozens, and she lost herself in the safe place where no one wanted to mention the Cylons, for so many reasons that would hurt too much to say right now. Julia didn't quite fit in, yet again. She sat for the sake of an emotion that teased at comfort. Even that little tasted sweet.

Some of it was bitter, such as when their numbers dwindled as members found the strength to take in some of the many New Caprican orphans. Julia's skin crawled at the idea of trying to fill that hole in her life with anything—anything but...anything—and she had to bite her lip to stay silent in the face of their newfound joy. For the first time, she wondered if maybe the only way to survive was to forget Kacey, bury her memory lovingly in a place where it would hurt less. When she realized that she didn't even have a picture to put on the memorial wall, it tore her apart and left her in such choking tears that she couldn't bear it.

But just like before, Paulla Schaffer found her as she was almost on the verge of self-destruction. After Julia looked up from the bench after the meeting was over and saw the dark pain in those eyes, none of their differences sprang to mind, and Paulla was the first person she embraced since she'd lost Kacey.

"You know I never would have wished this on you," Paulla assured her, almost sharply. "Even before—even before I lost."

Julia nodded once, wiping her eyes. Just standing here, seeing a familiar friendly face, brought back that feeling of family that had been ripped away. And before family had been an almost friendship. Her heart wasn't as dead as she thought, as right now it begged to not walk away and denounce the world.

"Do you want tea?" she asked after a second.

Paulla stared at her, as if the normalcy became odd when it came from Julia. "I think a tea would be good," she finally said with a nod.

Julia was once again saved from ultimate destruction. And this time she wasn't planning on forgetting it.

***

Paulla's outlook on the world was still piercingly focused, and this time Julia adhered to her for all the things she did say as much as the ones she thankfully didn't. She got her hands dirty again, worked for the sake of others, fulfilled a purpose. It wasn't life, just something like it.

In the dark hours of the evening, Paulla tried to get her to read scripture, but Julia wouldn't touch the book. So instead they played checkers, not for the fun, just for the distraction. Hiding behind strategy made the words come out simpler.

"She was from them, not me," Julia said under her breath one night, fingers delicate as they moved the tiny stone piece across the board. "I always knew."

"I knew you did," Paulla said. "It was why you denied it."

"I could never decide if I was a traitor or not," Julia said, as Paulla took her move. "Because I could never separate the part of her that was mine, and the part of her that was..." She still couldn't say the word Cylon, and had to swallow.

"Mothers can't be traitors," Paulla spat out under her breath.

Julia looked up at her, saw the dull burn in her eyes as she focused on the board. And she breathed in shakily, not wanting to ask questions, still wondering about herself. The speculation didn't break her heart anymore, she just ached and almost relished the pain. What ached most was that she knew that it had always been doomed; either someone would have taken Kacey and destroyed her, or her very nature would have risen up and broken Julia's heart on its own.

Yet because she didn't have a choice, and her heart didn't feel like it could be any more broken, she stubbornly decided that she would have rather had Kacey break her heart. At least then Julia would have done it to herself, and she'd have been able to hold Kacey and stroke her hair and sing songs to her just a little longer.

***

Julia stopped hating the fact that her nightmares were going away. The torment of her life was drying up, here in the Fleet and the sort of peace that surrounded it on the lower decks. The Cylons hadn't bothered them for so long that she could hear the word without flinching now.

She almost looked forward to her work being done, when she and Paulla could talk or drink or do some pointless hobby that killed time. They'd almost learned to smile with more than just mouths, almost learned that broken hearts could still find happiness. Julia gathered each moment of blissful forgetfulness close to her heart, just opposite the place where Kacey was hallowed in broken loving memory.

Julia didn't much care where humanity as a whole were going or how long they would last. The past was so far behind, she didn't even make a plan for what would happen if their leaders failed. She was safe, for the first time in her memory. No enemies of the flesh (or metal), and none of the mind. No one could break her heart anymore, so she could start fitting the pieces back together, until maybe one day it would look whole and that would make a difference.

***

She knew of them by reputation, of course, Starbuck and Anders. Anders was a distant memory, and since you didn't hear of one without the other anymore, it wasn't that kind of connection in her mind. But she had never really paid attention.

Julia almost missed another opportunity for her heart to die, eight months after they escaped the Cylon occupation. But she didn't.

"Is Kacey safe?"

Julia didn't recognize the voice calling across Dogsville, but she could never hear that name without something striking deep. Her heart throbbed automatically, but she followed the voice and then finally saw them—Starbuck and Anders, with a little blonde angel in their arms.

"Kacey?" she gasped. There was no way to describe the feelings that started overwhelming her first shock as she recognized that face, that perfect face that shouldn't be _real_. "Oh my gods, Kacey?"

The child's head turned, and despite the changes, it wasn't just Julia's hope telling her that _that was her child_. The world was suddenly all light and bright colors, and hope and relief, and everything that made her tune out the rest as she walked towards her miraculously alive child.

"Ma-ma?" Kacey's broken syllables came out cautiously, but all Julia heard was the second iteration of the word that had once broken her heart with beauty.

"Oh yes, Kacey, it's mama," she said, tears clouding her eyes as she walked forward and felt her whole face smiling. In that moment she didn't know the meaning of the word bitterness.

Then the barrel of a gun shot up, and Starbuck was holding her Kacey, and now held a gun on Julia.

"I'm sorry, but this is our child," Anders said, stepping closer to them.

Julia couldn't breathe, not with the gun in her face and her child right there, two steps away just like in every nightmare. But she hadn't tripped yet. "No, no, she can't be. I know—she looks just like her, and she's the right age, and the name—my Kacey! When the Cylons took her on New Caprica, I thought—" Kacey's face, so much older after all this time, looked confusedly at her. Julia couldn't focus on words.

Her child was right there. Alive. Whole. Clinging to another woman. Julia was so close to healing her nightmare, if she could only find the words.

There was confusion around her, but she managed to protest long enough for her sentences to be heard. And for Kacey to hear them, and say that precious word again. She didn't stretch out her hands for Julia, but Julia didn't care as she reached for her, and as soon as Kacey fell into her arms she thought that nothing could destroy her world.

She held Kacey pressed against her heart, trying not to cry tears of joy. When Kacey hugged her back, Julia didn't stop to consider anything else. Her baby was her life.

By the time the authorities were called in, Julia wasn't sure she knew what was going on. Someone told her that Kacey had been kidnapped, and needed to be checked out by a doctor. Julia couldn't even protest that, and just stood staring as they took Kacey from her arms but promised to bring her back.

Then Kacey was gone again. But not for good. The overwhelming joy that had filled Julia's heart kept her sane for just a moment, just a moment before she looked over and remembered that she wasn't alone. Starbuck stood there, Anders at her side, looking as if they'd just been shot. And pure panic filled Julia's veins as she saw her own pain in their eyes, that first pain, the pain that hurts the worst. It suddenly hit her that she hadn't won yet, and now she was their enemy.

Laura Roslin herself asked for Julia's story, and the words couldn't hurt anymore. She forced a near-steadiness in her voice when told them about the Farms, about hiding everything, about pretending that it wasn't real until Kacey was whisked away and she had died inside. Surely none of that mattered anymore, not when Kacey was alive and almost within arm's grasp.

"We had our doctors examine Kacey only recently," Adama said quietly. "She is certainly related to Kara Thrace, but she also bears the same markers as the half-Cylon child Hera Agathon."

Julia flinched at the word, but the panic still fueled her. "But what does that mean?" Her frantic words came out as she realized how Starbuck fit in, and for a wretched moment she thought that if she'd only known that Anders would someday take her child then she might have killed him back then out of fright. "I'm her mother—I gave birth to her, I raised her."

An attack came out of left field from Starbuck herself. "What is that supposed to mean?" she demanded, eyes harsh on Julia. "She's my child, a part of me. You gave up on her, you abandoned her, and now that she has a place and a family you just want her back?"

Julia's stomach was heaving and she was starting to feel dizzy, and this was all starting to hurt and she could barely keep the flooding memories from making her breathe too fast. Her hands started trembling, and she desperately used all the strength she had taught herself over these many months, and crossed her arms and tried to look straight at them and not break down.

Her argument wasn't articulate, just words of love, and how much her panic made her hate the idea that anyone could think Kacey was not hers. Her whole body and mind ached to have her child back in her arms. She would give up everything for that, even if only for a day. That was the motherhood that terrified her as she realized it still wasn't miraculously in her power to fulfill.

But no one answered her, and she couldn't stay standing. They weren't listening, they weren't listening, and if she didn't sit she would fall and crash into pieces.

Starbuck lashed out again, and the anger in her words might have been Julia's own, twisted and turned around against her. The words echoed in her head, words like 'I have killed for her'. "I love Kacey," Julia cried out, taking Starbuck's pain and making it her own again. "I thought my heart died on the day I couldn't find her. She was all I had!"

But just like Julia would never stop, she saw that Starbuck was the same. Julia covered her face with her hands when Starbuck said words that were exactly what Julia felt, full of that all-consuming love and need to protect that would never go away. And beyond them, words that said that Julia couldn't handle it, that there was pain and worry and danger that Julia couldn't understand.

Julia did. But what mattered more was the danger of losing Kacey, not to the Cylons, not to some nebulous force, but to _Starbuck_. As she sat, and as scalding tears streamed down her face, and every dark place in her life seemed to come back in this moment, she realized that she was fighting Starbuck. And she hardly knew anyone in this Fleet, but she knew enough to know that she would lose. This was a no win fight.

Just like it had always been. Kacey was a half-Cylon. The Cylons had taken something from Starbuck and made a weapon, and had given it to Julia to nurture, just long enough before they could steal it back. Julia swallowed back the nausea only just barely, and her heart screamed to just think of Kacey, her little Kacey, her baby.

Her little baby that had been safe in another mother's arms just moments before, and not even a baby after all this time. Julia would do anything for Kacey, even kill to have her back, so urgent was the need of her heart. But she realized that she couldn't kill Kacey's love. That would be worse than her own death—which meant only one option, and that was fighting with Starbuck for priority. The panic became despair in Julia's veins as she realized how impossible was the option. She was a nobody, a nobody who'd lost a child that everyone thought was someone else's. A nobody with no one at her back, no one to take her side.

When Anders sat next to her, she hated him, even as he spoke words that confused her with the understanding behind them. "All of that doesn't really matter," he finally finished, after he put into words just how cruelly the Cylons had manipulated them all. "Kara and I, we've always known that Kacey wasn't going to have an easy life. We knew what she was and that didn't matter, but it could mean anything. Maybe she can project, or download, we don't know."

The feeling of wrongness struck her, and Julia found herself shaking and whispering, "That's not possible, she's just a child, a human child."

"Half human," Anders said.

He didn't even have to finish his speech, even though he did. He didn't need to say that he and Starbuck were ready to face all the sickening reality of who her little Kacey was, didn't need to say that they were ready to face that even if Julia took her away, that they just couldn't give up on their love. He didn't need to say any of it. Julia knew that none of them could see her pain, and in the end it wouldn't really be important. Kacey would break all their hearts, loving or not, just as she always would have. So what was Julia fighting? The chance to have her heart break later?

The doctor brought back Kacey at last, and even as Julia's eyes turned yearningly towards her child, she toddled over to Starbuck—to her mother, as the doctor had said. No, not later. Julia's heart broke now.

She was losing the little strength she had built up over all these months to a losing battle, and she wasn't even fighting for the exact same little girl who had been hers. Hating the Cylons for making her love Kacey, hating Starbuck and Anders for loving her too, Julia felt herself tumbling into darkness and knew she had to stop it. Knew she had to break her own heart before they did it again, before the inevitable happened.

It only took a few words to explain it to them, explain that Kacey wasn't hers anymore and she wasn't ready for all this. They could have her. She'd go back to living.

It was all a lie.

Truth hung on every word, but every word she left out made the rest a lie. She was crushing her heart down into tiny pieces, forcing herself to move against the impulses of love, killing herself because she was facing death from all sides. When there was no win, at least you could go out on your own terms. She'd done it on New Caprica, and somehow survived. Maybe she could do this too.

She didn't know how she detached herself enough to finish letting her daughter go. If Paulla had been there, she would have stopped Julia from destroying herself with every word, with every goodbye. But she wasn't. Julia pretended to put on a smile and pretended that she could just give Kacey to Starbuck after one hug. She pretended that she knew exactly what she was doing when she walked away and didn't look back.

Julia died yet again on that day and Paulla found her in the head, weeping and wishing she could feel sick enough to prove just how wrong she had been. Paulla said nothing, just held her, and finally brought her back to her bed so that she could cry herself to sleep.

She'd destroyed herself now to prevent a worse destruction later.

***

Yet, she didn't have any nightmares. Kacey was alive. Kacey was safe. Kacey was no longer Julia's, but that wasn't enough for nightmares.

Julia threw herself into work, into trying to forget again. She hated herself for what she had done, and if another answer had come to mind she would still do anything to bring it about, but there wasn't one. The only options were pain, more pain, and more pain. She'd chosen one; it would make no sense to add another.

So she worked and tried to forget that she hadn't lost a child, she'd given hers up. "There was no point to any of it," she finally told Paulla. "All of it, all the good that I found...just a mask to cover up the fact that it was torture. And I gave in and accepted it, and made it worse."

"You don't know the gods' will," Paulla said quietly. "And yet you say love has no meaning."

"There are no gods!" Julia burst out angrily.

For once, they both knew that more speech wouldn't help and so they didn't use it.

Julia cried herself to sleep that second night as well, and said to herself that all love had done was killed her. She hardened again. She was giving up, giving up everything. She wanted to forget and stop caring, and this last twist of the knife was just a reminder why—that the Cylons could still torture her even after so long. Well, not anymore. Julia wouldn't let them. She'd forget, she wouldn't care, and she couldn't lose again if she didn't join the battle.

Soon the events of yesterday would be like all the others, forgotten.

Julia slept on the bed that she'd made, and a nightmare didn't come but a dream did.   
_  
She was standing in a brilliant opera house, in the wings of the great hall, and from far off she heard a voice that she knew was Kacey's. Standing stock still, she watched as Kacey ran across the plush floor and finally stood at the foot of two high doors. Beyond them, a light shone through._

_Julia saw Starbuck step from the shadows, glowing like an angel. She saw Starbuck and Kacey share a look. She saw them turn and look behind them, up at a balcony that Julia couldn't see from beneath the wings. Then Starbuck walked forward, and the doors parted, and the dream disappeared in the bright light that overwhelmed them all._

Julia woke and stared at the wall beyond her bed. Her breathing came steadily, and she didn't feel the need to cry or choke or even move. All she felt was a desire to live. She had to.

As she closed her eyes and could still see Kacey in the opera house, face shining with peace, Julia breathed out one slow breath. It did matter. It did matter that Kacey lived, even if Julia had pushed her away in terror of heartbreak again. Julia didn't need to forget—she needed to remember. Kacey could still step between Julia's death and her life and bring her to the side of the living, if Julia just held on a little longer. She might have died too many times to count, but she was still here, and so was Kacey. Even from a distance they would live together, and that would be life.

Someday. Somehow. She'd broken her own heart, but that just meant that she had the power to hold those pieces together until she figured out what to do with them. And Julia knew now what she was working towards.


End file.
